11. Issues Arising from Operation of the HSNO Act
11.1 Summary
The HSNO Act commenced for new organisms on 29 July 1998 and for hazardous substances on 2 July 2001. The following issues have arisen in light of experience under the Act, and are considered in this section:
- The time to release a decision – it is proposed that this be extended from 15 to 30 days in order to allow ERMA sufficient time to adequately consider, decide and publicly notify its decisions on significant applications.
- The definition of ‘new organism’ – there are issues with the identification of organisms at a species level. Possible amendments could be to improve the ability to use the risk species provision of the Act to distinguish between subspecies, varieties, strains and cultivars presenting different risks and/or changes to the definition.
- The definition of ‘organism’ – this could be amended to include prions.
- Compliance orders – (a) the current minimum four-day period, from the time the notice is served for compliance to occur, could be changed to a reasonable period in the circumstances; (b) the requirement that the notice state the last day on which a notice of appeal can be lodged could be deleted (thereby relying on the requirements of the District Court Rules).
- The time to lay information for a prosecution – there are issues of consistency with the Biosecurity Act on the one hand and the Resource Management Act and Health and Safety in Employment Act on the other. Changes could be made to both the time period (from 120 working days to two years) and to when the time period commences (from time of knowledge of the offence to time the offence occurred).
- A review of the Second Schedule (prohibited new organisms).
- Large-scale fermentation – criteria could be developed for what can be considered large scale that better reflect the risk, rather than relying on a figure of 10 litres.
- Clarification of the decision-making criteria for new organisms in containment – to address questions as to the operation of section 45.
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